


phases of the moon

by argle_fraster



Series: wax and wane [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Marking, playing with lydia's immunity, why is she so awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-04
Updated: 2012-09-04
Packaged: 2017-11-13 13:02:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/503815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/argle_fraster/pseuds/argle_fraster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lydia doesn't know why she feels like she's straddling both worlds, belonging to neither - she wants to belong, and not to Peter Hale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	phases of the moon

The full moon makes her skin crawl, and not in the good way; it feels like there are worms roving over her skin, coming from Peter Hale's eye-sockets as he whispers platitudes to her. She claws at her arms, but the feeling doesn't go away, and it's the itch beneath her flesh that she can't scratch. She hates worms. It could have been ants - a picnic of moving dots of black, and at least those would have been less horrific crawling up into a burnt-out nostril.

Lydia's house is a tomb of a mansion, and when the moon is hanging bright and round in the sky, it feels like a mausoleum. She needs to get out and doesn't have anywhere to go. There's a dent in the side of her car from something she doesn't even remember, and she's too rattled by the shifting world beneath her feet to care what it was that hit her. She should have sprung for the dent-resistant plastic, been less pretentious about the vehicle. It's water under the bridge by this point, and still, her brain tries to find bits and pieces to focus on that aren't the heaviness settling down around her shoulders as she slides in behind the wheel anyway.

She drives without a destination in mind, and ends up in the woods, taking her German automotive masterpiece off-roading between the trees. The Hale house sits in front of her like a shell; the inside is long-gone, burned away, devoid of anything.

It smells like Peter Hale. It takes her ten minutes to get out of the car, because she can't get her hands to stop shaking - she wishes she didn't know what Peter Hale smelled like.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knows the others are in the hollowed train. Allison said something about it - chaining them up for their own good. They're too young and too volatile. Lydia doesn't think any of them know a single thing about volatile until they can't stop their own feet from moving silently across the grass, fingers plucking flowers that should be deadly poison and grinding them to ash against their palms. She goes in the house anyway, because the moon is bright and the house is a good place to hide from it - at least the sections where the roof hasn't collapsed on its own weight.

He doesn't seem surprised to see her. Lydia wishes she could see him surprised.

"It's not safe here," Derek says.

"It's not safe anywhere." She doesn't even mean to laugh; it sort of comes out unbidden, and it sounds awful. It sounds just as hollow as the damn house. She used to be something more than this. Now, she's just a ghost, the sort that sleepwalks through the forest and finds herself in abandoned old houses haunted by the dark things that stalk the night.

She's got his attention now.

"You would have been a good wolf," Derek says, and it's unfair how he can still surprise her when it doesn't go both ways. "You would have been strong. In control. Pack females like you don't happen very often."

"You wish I'd turned?" Lydia asks.

Derek's mouth thins a bit, crinkles at the corners. "Do you?"

In response, she balls her hands into the hem of her dress. She can't even remember what color it was - she can't remember putting it on this morning. She glares across the empty, debris-strewn foyer and takes a deep breath. She knows he can hear her heart. She wonders what it's whispering to him, thudding against her ribs.

"Is he here?" she asks, instead.

"No."

It's nice, not having to worry. Not having to explain herself. Lydia doesn't care about summoning the energy to be something she's not - not here. Not under the bright, siren call of the orb in the sky. It wants her, and there's nothing to respond with. Every nerve in her form comes up empty, and she doesn't know why it hurts so much.

"Did you know?" she tries. "Did you know what he was going to do to me?"

Derek's lips thin further. "No."

There's a war going on inside her mind: half of her desperately wants to be here, to be close, to find the place where the cord snapped and she lost part of herself, and half of her wants nothing more than to leave. Lydia isn't sure which one is going to win. The shadows are throwing harsh, almost perfect 90 degree angles onto the rotting floorboards.

She lunges forward and either catches Derek off-guard or is allowed to finish the motion. Her fingernails might not be claws, but there's shellac polish on them, and she digs them into his shoulders. It yields beneath her, and it feels good - it feels real. There's a growl and she's honestly not sure which one of them it came from.

"You should have known," she hisses. They stumble against the stairs and her back hits the railing. His claws are out. It's awful how much she wants them to carve deep lines down her shoulders, like torn wings that were ripped from the bone. "You should have known what he was doing."

"If you were a wolf, you'd be under my control," Derek says. His voice has gone deep and feral.

Lydia just laughs again, again and again. One of his hands curls around her neck. "Not your pack. I'd never be your pack."

There's a moment of nothing, of Derek's eyes red - they look like Peter's. Lydia can see Peter's eyes as centipedes crawl out of the sockets and drop down to the carpet of her living room. There's blood everywhere. She can't remember a time when she didn't see blood coating the walls, crimson handprints staining the edges of her vision.

She tilts her head to one side, baring her neck.

"You want to," she whispers. She can see it on his face, can smell it on his scent, can feel it rippling through the muscles pinning her uncomfortably to the wooden rail. "You want to turn me. But you can't."

"I can't," Derek agrees.

It stings when he leans forward and bites. He catches the space between her shoulder and her jaw, bottom canines skimming the top of her collarbone. Only belatedly does she realize it's the same side that Peter bit, and then it feels better - it's a mark to cover the other mark. It's not deep enough to tear tendons or hit the artery, but the sharp pang of teeth breaking skin is adequate.

She doesn't recognize the sounds she's making until they have already left her mouth. Somehow, her arms wound up snaked around Derek's shoulders, fingers clawing deep at the muscles along his spine. His tongue sweeps over the mark, penance, hot breath and warm trails of moisture. Then she turns her head, or he does; one of them moves, anyway, and his kisses feel like smaller bites against her lips. There's the acrid taste of copper and she moans against his mouth, letting him swallow the sound.

She lets him claim her. She won't be Peter Hale's.

Her hair had been curled and he's destroying it, tugging and tangling his hands up in the strands, and she pushes back against him and nips at his bottom lip, dragging it with her teeth until he growls, full-on growls. She would have been a formidable wolf. She can feel the urge to mark buzzing in her veins: something kept, just not the parts that should have. She is the latitude along which the world revolves, the formula that splays out in each direction and calculates velocity. She is a boiling pot of water beneath a white eggshell, and she wants to break.

"Fuck," Derek groans, and it sounds so strange, so _human_. He drags his hands along the expanse of her thighs, the bits not covered by the drapes of her skirt, and she wants to curl her legs around his waist and squeeze. Instead, she finds his neck, ignores the warning growl that rumbles beneath her mouth there, and assaults the skin enough to purple and bruise.

There's a howl outside: one of the pups, free from the restraints. Derek drags his mouth away and Lydia can taste regret. She's not sure what it's directed at.

"I'd never be your pack," she says, and it comes out strained. His eyes are still red, but this time they don't like Peter Hale at all. She wonders if she should even have been allowed to ravage him like she did, as an alpha.

"No," Derek agrees. His fangs are still out. He looks like he was just thoroughly destroyed, and Lydia's body trills in hot triumph, almost proud. There's dried blood on her shoulder, and there's an angry trail of broken vessels on Derek's neck. She isn't sure which mark really went deeper.

He's got to get the escapee before they get away completely.

There are worms crawling across Lydia's toes.

Reluctantly, Derek steps back from the banister. "You may be a wolf yet."

"Maybe," Lydia says.

She stays in the shell of a house for a long time after he's gone, chasing the runaway, drawing differential equations in the grime covering the floor.


End file.
